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Hi Art
Howard Sam’s is still out there but they were force to become more into a subscriptions oriented company. Dependence on what is available and or what limits what their catalog coverage today has to be in the production numbers. The service industry is so proprietary with circuits/components; I bet it is a real jungle out there.
Thanks for the kind words for my Dad's skills. He did work for RCA during his last years when they were into manufacturing T.V. sets in Memphis during the seventies. It really did hurt him to see them close up and go to Puerto Rico.
He worked as a troubleshooter before and after final assembly there. He said they tested the sets by bouncing them and then beating them with rubber mallets.
He was very good at just looking at the screens and zeroing in on the controlling section. He wrote up the boards with the component(s) or a dead board problem. He said it could be a bad batch of components, bad soldering practice or a connector’s pin. That sounds familiar for the Brick Board or anything built today I guess.
Soldering of the connections was and still is the number one reason for failures. Cheap and fast is always lurking to sit on someone’s shoulders.
Silver looking paint for a trace does not work when you factor in the oxidation of time and temperatures. Those are my conclusions and it appears it is yours too.
He always said that the decline for skilled electronic technicians started with the Quasar TV sets. Their slide in replacement solid-state circuit boards took away the repairing of things. Just remove and replace. He hated the idea of cable over the free air television too. He said we would end up paying or renting for everything.
We all know it has gotten ridiculously worse today, by looking at the monthly bills and the landfills anywhere in the world.
He became a more depressed American worker during the late eighties. He reached retirement and just gave up. He drank the rest of the twenty years of life away. If I could have stood to see that, I would have tried to get him to teach me some of what he knew. It was a true waste for both of us.
This has been going on in this country for a lot longer than anyone wants to admit. I had to change careers and luckily in enough time. I was able rethink the experiences of my father and self improve to gain other skills. They call it diversifying today.
I was able to look over the horizon and I adjusted around the other careers that left this country. I am very lucky to be comfortable in retirement.
Taking something apart and learning from it, inventing or reinventing is a basic form of learning since the beginning of time for humankind.
I remembered this just for you Art!
A quote from a famous automotive maker of flexible cylinder hones. They are the ones with the cutting balls on a bottlebrush like affair.
“Nothing improves, until someone Stops and questions an accepted assumption.”
It may prove to be a shame that our own schools have lost their roots in so many places and yet, they have grown so well in the minds of others on our planet.
Phil
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